Policy Proposal – 8 Person Board

The Executive Board shall be comprised of eight Chairs. Seven of the Chairs that make up the Board will be voting members, and one of the Chairs of the Board will act as a nonvoting member.

This would be increasing the board by 2 voting members.

The proposed executive board is

President
Treasurer
Director of Officiating
Chief of Content
Director of League Expansion and Retention
Director of Nationals (Nonvoting)

*NEW* Director of Technology and Internal Affairs
*NEW* Director of Marketing and League Development

Supporting information and reasoning is included provided by Colin O’Brien

BLUE Indicates roles of current positions that would be allocated to the Director of Technology and Internal Affairs

RED Indicates roles of current positions that would be allocated to the Director of Marketing and League Development

5.4.1 President

5.4.1.1.7 Relationships – Establishing and maintaining relationships with potential sponsors and other shared-interest organizations in the United States and elsewhere.

5.4.3 Director of Officiating

5.4.3.1.6 Development Team – Co-directs the Development Team along with the DoO consisting of Front End Web Developers, Back End Programmers, and any other colleagues as needed to fulfil the tasks of the office.

5.4.3.1.7 Improve – As co-director of the Development Team, improve the Organization’s website through good design and development.

5.4.4 Chief of Content

5.4.4.1.2 Development Team – Co-directs the Development Team along with the DoO, consisting of Front End Web Developers, Back End Programmers, and any other colleagues as needed to fulfil the tasks of the office.

5.4.4.1.4 Updating – As director of the Content Team, keep the Organization’s website in order by maintaining and updating existing static content, while introducing new content as needed.

5.4.4.1.6 Improve – As co-director of the Development Team, improve the Organization’s website through good design and development.

5.4.4.1.7 Social Management – As director of the Social Management Team, maintain the Organization‘s online social identity and presence. Work new Director of Marketing and League Development to maintain and support new partnerships.

5.4.5 Director of League Expansion and Retention

5.4.5.1.8 Charitable Organizations – Working to create and maintain relationships with charitable organizations. Working with President on campaigns that both help with recruitment and raise funds for charitable organizations.

5.4.5.1.9 Community – Creating campaigns to help develop positive relationships with our Organization and the communities the Members belong to.

Both position names pending, can be changed to best describe the position

Director of Technology and Internal Affairs

Currently, the Director of Officiating’s primary duties have to do with just that, officiating. Maintenance over officials and the rulebook makes complete sense under the given title. With just these responsibilities, the position is accessible to people who have significant experience in officiating and a breadth of knowledge about the rulebook. However, there are aspects lumped into the DoO’s responsibilities in the Constitution that greatly restrict the accessibility of the position, and they are highlighted in blue above. The intersection of rulebook knowledge and development ability and background is essentially limited to just Zig. And while it’s good that we have a qualified person currently holding the position, it’s not good for the league if an Executive Board member’s duties result in only one qualified person capable of holding the position. Due to this, I propose to split off the duties highlighted in blue above into its own E-Board position.

The NCDA website is one of the league’s most important assets. Outside of social media, it is the only contact point to the league as a whole. I don’t think I need to go into all the benefits the website offers, but needless to say without it the NCDA would be a very different entity. I don’t think it’s health and maintenance should be lumped into the tail end roles of an E-Board position whose primary duties have to do with officiating and the rulebook. There seems to be no clear connection between those two duties aside from Zig being proficient in both. Furthermore, with a position dedicated to “technology and internal affairs,” more time would become available to pursue other development team affairs that have taken a backseat currently. Zig mentioned a week or so ago that the officiating app has made virtually no progress in years. That could be a venture this new position could pursue with greater attention and time. I do not mean to claim the inner workings of the development team, but from my perspective it seems fairly bare. I think the current nature of the Director of Officiating results in the development team taking a backseat. In my view, the development team seems to be just Zig nowadays.
Splitting off the head of the development team duty to fall under this new position would give it more importance and more time to potentially acquire more able bodied members of the NCDA to join and work on the development team.

Finally, I think one of the most important aspects of our sport is good quality game tape and highlight video. I will get more into this under the next position, but the Director of Technology and Internal Affairs would work with the next position to assure the video tab on the NCDA website is up to date as well as the NCDA YouTube account with every game film and highlight videos linked.

Director of Marketing and League Development or Vice President

The Director of League Expansion works primarily with new and upcoming teams, along with alumni relations. The new position of Director of Marketing and League Development would work with current teams and other potential organizations for partnerships, sponsorships, and other ventures.

One of the things we are always looking for is more help from players around the league for the plethora of things they might be able to help with. Currently, when we ask for help, the conversation goes somewhat like this: “If anyone wants to help write content, be on the development team, do anything that interests them, please speak up! We can even potentially offer college credit.” Response: (crickets). This year a couple of people joined the content team, but even then, it’s been a slow burn of people joining the league to help. That’s mostly due to the fact that no one has time to hound teams to see what their players might be able to offer. A Director of Marketing and League Development would allow the time and responsibility for someone to go to each team and hound them for players willing or persuaded to help the league. Leski has been successful with new teams because he hounds people to start a club. The same techniques could be successful to get new development team members, content writers, video highlight makers, whatever else we might need for the league.

I just mentioned video. Dodgeball video is the single most marketable aspect of our league or any dodgeball league for that matter. Right now, we do a terrible job in that regard. We have gotten much better in terms of trying to get more games recorded and streamed if possible. When I go to the league YouTube page, we have a couple of games from the ODC, and nothing else in terms of recorded games since last season. Many, many games this season have been recorded and even streamed besides the ODC, yet the they are conspicuously absent from the league YouTube account. Again, this is primarily due to no one having responsibility or the time to go out and get teams to upload their videos that they filmed, or acquire the film from the member teams. The same hounding techniques used to getting people to help the league would be utilized to get teams to either upload their film to YouTube or simply send them along to the Director of Marketing and League Development to upload himself. Periodic highlight videos could be created by having a deep library of matches filmed and uploaded online. Imagine joining with the content team to create best plays of the month. Something very doable but we currently have no one delegated to head such a task. Furthermore, the Video section of the NCDA page hasn’t been touched since I first created it two years ago and started the process of linking games from YouTube. I think we all agree, seeing college dodgeball is the primary method of getting people hooked to the game. The Director of Marketing and League Development would help fix/improve/utilize the most marketable aspect of the NCDA: video of the sport.

Finally, the new position could help grow the league outside of the current makeup of the NCDA. Similar to the Director of Officiating, the Director of League Expansion has a couple responsibilities lumped in to the end of his duties. Charitable organizations and community outreach are far different than reaching out to new member teams and managing their assimilation to the league. These duties along with reaching out to potential sponsors, partnerships, etc. would be better suited under someone focused on marketing and growing the league. The Director of Marketing and League Development would work with the President or under his discretion, and involve the President when needed, to make the connections that would help to grow the league from a perspective outside of adding new member teams. Reaching out to sports blogs would be a great way to help improve the visibility of the league; there’s hundreds of sports blogs out there, it doesn’t always have to be ESPN or nothing. To do that though we would probably need some better videos (see above). Adding another person dedicated to looking for new ventures to help grow the league could do wonders for the league. The NCDA has some very marketable aspects, but they are currently not being utilized anywhere near to their fullest potential.